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One Response to “Financial News 8/16/12 – Julian Assange Granted Asylum, Target & Wal-Mart Mobile Payment App”

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   16. Aug, 2012

   You might want to start getting used to leaving your wallet at home as
   more large retailers jump on the mobile payment bandwagon. Three of
   the US’s largest retailers, Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy have formed
   a company, named Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX. The company is
   developing its own mobile application to process payments and has
   hopes of gaining control over the wireless payment industry that many
   believe will become not only preferred, but standard. It is currently
   a 60 billion dollar industry that is projected to grow to 170 billion
   dollars in the next four years. The MCX app will not only be more
   convenient but cost effective as well, cutting back on credit card
   swipe fees, paid out by the store chains, which average $40 billion
   dollars a year. The app will be compatible with all smartphones and
   can process many forms of payments including VISA, MaterCard, Debit,
   and Credit accounts. MCX plans to partner with large banks so
   payments can be processed directly by customers current financial
   institution, other deals in the works include those with wireless
   carriers, advertising companies, and other retailers, gas stations and
   restaurants, including Sears, CVS, Shell Oil and 7-Eleven.

   The libor accusations have crossed the pond and the attorney
   general of New York and Connecticut issued subpoenas to seven banks
   including Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC,
   RBS and UBS over the past two months for the manipulation of interest
   rates. The manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, which
   is used to set the interest rates on trillions of dollars in contracts
   around the world, including mortgages and credit cards, has already
   resulted in fines, including Barclays four hundred and fifty million
   dollar settlement with various American and British regulators. So
   what does libor have to do with New York and Connecticut? Well, LIBOR
   is also used to determine the rates for the bonds issued by city and
   county governments. This whole fiasco may be one more reason to dump
   your bank stocks.

   Things got heated last night between protesters and U.K. police at
   the Ecuadorian embassy in London as the British government threatened
   to storm the embassy to arrest Julian Assange so he could be
   extradited to Sweden. Assange has been accused and charged with rape
   and sexual assault in Sweden. Protesters and the U.K. police weren’t
   the only ones in a tussle as Britain in no certain words said they
   would move to remove the embassy’s diplomatic protection. The
   Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino did not take this kindly
   and said in a statement, “We’re not a British colony. The colonial
   times are over” “The move announced in the official British statement,
   if it happens, would be interpreted by Ecuador as an unfriendly,
   hostile and intolerable act, as well as an attack on our sovereignty,
   which would force us to respond in the strongest diplomatic way.”